New Skill for the New Year

Swearing off the usual litany of New Year resolutions (except to maybe be kinder to people), the New Year is still a time to do something new or seek to improve yourself. I’ve decided that this year is the year I become proficient at archery.

Hunting is an excellent way to enjoy the outdoors, and while a gun is still the preferred method, a gun usually only gives you 10 days or so each year to hunt per state.

Bow hunting season, however, is much longer. For example, New York State’s deer and bear bow hunting season can be about three months long, depending on area. And on Long Island and parts of New York State closest to the city, where the population is very dense, only bow hunting is allowed for regular hunters. Bow hunting is also a bigger challenge. You have to be much closer to the animal to take it with an arrow and you will usually have to track that animal for a much longer distance once you’ve hit it.

And even if you don’t hunt, archery is an excellent and fun skill to develop. It’s something that city dwellers have the ability to do with several centers within the five boroughs. Archery is also a way to connect to the past and to characters in literature from Robin Hood to Katniss Everdeen.

I decided to visit QueensArchery, which is located not too far away from where I live. I showed up without a reservation but was getting a good archery lesson only a few minutes after arriving. The cost was only $25. That included an excellent lesson using a really sweet compound bow and some arrows on a target.

The young instructor taught me the basics of a proper stance and range safety, as well as other basic essentials that I had no idea about. For example, you NEVER “dry fire” a bow without an arrow in it. It can seriously damage it and cause it to come part. The compound bow uses a hand-held trigger device that one uses to release the bow and shoot the arrow. It was simple and the arrows flew into the target with a satisfying thwack!

A bow has to be set for each individual user and since mine wasn’t set for my specific use, it was not as accurate as it would have been if it had been customized. But with a little bit of adjustment, I managed to do pretty well. The instructor quickly moved me from the five yard line to the 10 yard line.

More newcomers arrived and they were soon shooting alongside me, some with compound bows and some with more traditional recurve bows. They varied in ability but they all seemed to have a nice time and they quickly improved their aim with some additional pointers from the instructors.

The instructor was happy with my abilities and said I might be able to move over to the more advanced part of the archery range on my next visit.

It was very satisfying to see the dozen or so hunting trophies on the wall that the center’s hunting club members had taken using their skills. It felt good to be in the city and be at a place where people appreciated were dedicated to developing skills for the outdoors.